A common lighting source used in residential and commercial lighting is incandescent light bulbs that produce light using a wire filament which is heated up by the electrical current running through the filament contained within a vacuum which may also contain a mercury vapor or halogen atmosphere. Many problems exist with these light bulbs in that such bulbs fail frequently, produce large amounts of heat and use significant amounts of electricity to produce light. These disadvantages result in high maintenance costs, rises in room temperature and unnecessary energy consumption.
There have been attempts to improve the efficiency of such light bulbs such as, for example, the use of lower power fluorescent light bulbs which can be utilized in a standard incandescent light bulb screw base fixture. While such bulbs do use less power, the problem of the mercury vapor atmosphere within the bulb is still present which can create environmental problems on disposal.
In many industrial and commercial areas, another common lighting source is fluorescent light bulbs which produce light by passing electrical current through a mercury vapor atmosphere within the bulb. Such fluorescent light bulbs have the advantage that they use less power than incandescent light bulbs that produce light by heating up a wire filament as well as not producing the same amount of heat as that produced by an incandescent bulb.
However, such bulbs still have problems in that they fail frequently resulting in high maintenance costs and the mercury vapor atmosphere within the bulb can cause environmental problems on disposal.
There have also been attempts in the past to replace various types of incandescent light bulbs with LED light bulbs such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,609,804. However, such LED light bulbs do not easily replace incandescent light sources, nor are they significantly more energy efficient for the same light output. In addition, there does not appear top have been attempts made to replace fluorescent light fixtures with LED light sources.
Thus, there still remains a need for a light fixture which can easily replace standard residential and commercial light fixtures but use less power, run cooler and have a longer life span.